RI Lacks services for poor: World Bank

Fitri Wulandari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Services for the poor in Indonesia are still insufficient and the government has yet to allocate money to make services more available for the poor, the World Bank says.

World Bank's lead economist Jeffrey Hammel said that as in other developing countries, services in Indonesia sometimes still failed the poor.

"It means, services are not available sometimes. But when they are available, the services are often bad," Hammel told a media briefing on Friday while launching the World Development Report in Jakarta.

Hammel said a study on education and health service in Indonesia paints a very disappointing picture. The study, which was based on surprise visits to public schools and primary health facilities, shows teacher absenteeism rates in public schools is 18 percent, while health official absenteeism in health clinics is 42 percent.

Most of the staff did not fulfill their duties because either they were being training, performing non-teaching government duties or simply shirking their responsibilities.

Janet Hohnen, World Bank Indonesia director for human development, added that the lack of education and health services was mostly because of the inadequate budget provided by the government.

However, Hohnen said the World Bank and the government had been working together to improve it.

Hammel noted that decentralization had given an opportunity to provide a better service for the poor as it made it easier for the poor to have their voices heard in decision making.

"It is easier for people to talk to a local politician than a national politician," Hammel said.

The poor should be given chances to get involved in setting priorities in service development and the monitoring of service providers.

"For services to be successful, poor people need to be at the center of service delivery," he said.

Indonesia could also copy the so-called citizen score card scheme, which has been successfully implemented in Bangalore, India.

"Citizen score card" is a survey conducted by people in cities where they rank the quality of public services, including garbage collection, the processing of driver's licenses, water supplies, schools and medicine.

Results of the survey would be published in the media.

Hammel said the system would work well if it was supported by a free press.

In Bangalore, there was some improvement in the services for the poor thanks to the "citizen score card".

"Some have been embarrassed by bad publicity in the media so they improved their services," Hammel said.